The Evangelicals

Though Newsweek called 1976 the “year of the evangelicals” we could certainly say that 2016 brought that title back up again. The high usage of the word was due to the election year and Trump’s special relationship with evangelicals, as well as the sharp war of words within the Christian community about why an evangelical should or should not vote for him. But evangelicals are certainly much more diverse than in 1976. Millennials are not the Moral Majority, and writers struggle sometimes whether to use Evangelicals or just evangelicals. I contend that spelling matters.

It seems fitting then that, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances FitzGerald is coming out in 2017. I have no idea where she is taking this book. It may be totally a political foray. It may include social mission. It may ponder what is an evangelical. Or it may be a dull diatribe. I don’t know. But given the saturation of the word in 2016, I think it would worth while to read what a well-known author who has won the Pulitzer Prize has to say.